Brian O’Driscoll Criticises Ireland’s Creativity

Former Irish Captain Brian O’Driscoll, has called for Ireland to be more adventurous in attack.

Ireland may have claimed bonus point wins in both their opening World Cup games against Canada and Romania, but Joe Schmidt’s team has come in for some criticism.

While the effectiveness of Ireland’s game plan cannot be questioned, their lack of creativity and offloading ability has been, by none other than one of the most creative players Ireland has ever seen – Brian O’Driscoll.

O’Driscoll decribed Ireland’s performance against Romania as ‘solid without being spectacular’. The former captain told Newstalk’s Off The Ball, “you really need guys with the mind-set that they want to offload and that it is an option, rather than taking in another phase.”

BOD argued that if Ireland want o get to the semi final or final, they will have to take ‘a few more risks’.

Although he did say that Ireland are ‘very capable of bringing a team through multiple phases’. O’Driscoll also pointed out,

You look at the top quality sides in the world, where they don’t appear to have to put in quite as much effort as we do for our scores or penalties.

That comes down to an off-loading game and a small bit of risk taking. I don’t think we take enough risks personally.

Our first passage of play [against Romania] was over three minutes and we got nothing out of it. That would be the only concern for me.

When asked if Ireland have ever taken risks under Schmidt, he replied ‘probably not’. Nevertheless O’Driscoll was adamant that Joe Schmidt wants his team to ‘entertain people and that probably was not reflected until the Scotland game [in the Six Nations]’.

Nevertheless O’Driscoll believes that there is more to come from Ireland, after witnessing intelligent patterns such as loops and wraparounds. Roll 0n Italy on Sunday.